Denso Passenger Eye prevents tired drivers from crashing

It’s 3 am and you still have 3 more hours of driving ahead of you before you get home from an interstate trip with your family. Your eyelids feel heavy, and you start to doze off. Your car starts to slowly drift into the next lane and you hear the sounds of car horns blaring around you. You quickly wake up from the brief slumber and correct your car’s position. I’m sure most of you have been in such situations before, and no they aren’t pleasant. Sleepy drivers are some of the main causes of accidents on highways and nobody wants to be part of the statistic but sometimes such drives are unavoidable. Well, the folks over at Denso have devised an answer to the problem. Called the Denso Passenger Eye, this handy robot helps to keep tired drivers alert and focused on the road while driving. It packs an advanced camera that detects facial expressions, tiredness, and tries to prevent it. When it senses that a driver is dozing off, it activates bright red lights on the car’s dashboard and automatically highlights nearby coffee shops with the car’s built-in satnav. It pairs up with a smartphone to work so it can even act as a handsfree device for answering calls safely. Still in concept stage at the moment but it sounds promising. Let’s see how effective the robot is when it finally hits the streets. Check out a video of it in action after the break:

George Wong
Categories: Robots, Transportation
Tags: car, CES, CES 2011, dashboard, driving, Robot, safety